


Superman

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Brotherly Love, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 13:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1552115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam contemplates how looking up to Dean from birth led to his decision to take Lucifer into the box.</p><p>Takes place in S5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Superman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ash_carpenter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash_carpenter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Road to Battle](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/47750) by ash_carpenter. 



Sam’s first memory was Dean. Actually, all Sam’s first memories were of Dean: Dean trying to teach him to play Dean’s older-kid games (and failing--two-year-olds can’t grasp Go Fish or Old Maid), Dean reading to him (superhero comics, mostly), Dean bodily hauling him around, grunting with the effort (Dean insists Sam was a fat toddler). Playing Batman to Dean’s Superman. Some kids wanted to be a doctor or a teacher or a businessman like their dads. Sam just wanted to be Superman.

Later on, when Sam learned about imprinting in school, he realized with discomfort that, insofar as humans imprint, he’d done it on Dean. Dad was just this guy in the background who stared at them wistfully a lot. In retrospect, Sam realized Dad seemed afraid to touch them, to get too close to them, for fear his overpowering grief would destroy their childish ability to be happy and carry on, so he let Dean be Sam’s dad, and the relationship between Sam and Dean was cemented.

It hadn’t been long before Sam learned this wasn’t the usual way of things--at school, the other kids were always talking about their parents the way Sam talked about his brother. So Sam learned to do the same. He learned to value those few normal parental moments with Dad so he could trot them out whenever evidence of such a thing seemed required, but that was all part of the Winchester façade, because even Dad knew Sam’s real parent was Dean.

It was years before Sam learned it was actually Dean who had saved him from their house the night Mom died, carried him outside. Dad was just-right drunk one night when Sam was six--drunk enough to be able to talk about it, not so drunk as to be incoherent with rage or sorrow--and he finally told them the tale. Dean was just as riveted as Sam was, since he had previously only understood it from the perspective of a terrified four-year-old. Sam had never really known what had happened. Dean had told Sam he was the one who carried him outside, but Sam hadn’t believed it possible. Carrying a big baby down a full set of stairs and out the door of a house would require dexterity and balance uncommon for a four-year-old under the best of circumstances, much less at night in a state of terror. He hadn’t thought Dean was lying, just that he was so fixated on Sam or so keen to think he’d played an important part or so obsessed with being the hero that he invented the memory. Come to find out it was the truth. Sam looked at Dean, wide-eyed, and saw the way Dean looked back at him: certain that, that one night at least, he’d done his duty. A proud son, who followed his father’s orders and saved his brother’s life, though he was so young. Dean patted Sam on the back with a grin, remembering. Sam wondered if Dean saw the way he looked back at Dean: like Dean was a superhero. For the rest of his childhood, Sam never again doubted a thing Dean told him. 

So when Dean made the deal to bring Sam back from the dead, Sam wasn’t surprised. Shocked, horrified, angry ... but not surprised. It was just the kind of thing superheroes did, without even thinking about it: to give their lives to save someone else. But what would happen to Metropolis when Superman was dead and beyond reach? What would happen to Sam? It took Sam a while to realize his rage over Dean’s deal was this sense of his own smallness, of unimportance. Of course the superhero made the sacrifice to save him, but what about Sam? What would Sam do when the superhero who took care of him was gone? How would he get by without someone to get him out of his scrapes, to look after him? How would he get by without someone to look up to? 

It had never been Dad, that was for sure. It could never be Dad. He could respect the man, but he could never look up to that broken, vengeance-driven drunk. By nature, Sam didn’t really look up to anyone; their flaws were too apparent to him, but Dean had been his shining example since before he learned to see that stuff, and somehow, with Dean, he still couldn’t. Even when Dean was an alcoholic after returning from hell, scarcely functional, it wasn’t the same to Sam as Dad’s drinking; unconsciously, he believed there had to be some other explanation for it, that it was superhero fuel or something ... until, eventually, it was the same and Sam could no longer deny it ... and he couldn’t bear it. Sam could live in a brutal world where nothing and no one was that good or strong or capable, as long as there was one person who was. 

Dean was so surprised Sam fell apart without him? Blamed him for not being stronger? Sam was no superhero; Dean knew that ... didn’t he? Maybe he expected him to be. There was a part of Sam that had never grown up, that was still trying to make his parent proud, that would do anything to accomplish it--anything. So if Dean expected Sam to be better than he was, to be great like Dean ... he had to find a way. 

A regular man like Sam couldn’t be all that Dean was, but if he tried hard enough, maybe he could accomplish the greatest things a regular man could. He couldn’t save the world by turning back time or flying nuclear weapons into space. He couldn’t charge into danger, guns blazing, and win, every time. He couldn’t beat a reaper, couldn’t cheat death twice, couldn’t kill the thing that killed their mother. He could only do the greatest thing a regular man could do: give his life to save the world. Dean was surprised that Sam wanted to take Lucifer into the box? He was just emulating his hero.

 

~ The End ~


End file.
